


Tuesday's Child

by EvilMuffins



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Limbs, Permanent Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-07 21:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4278426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilMuffins/pseuds/EvilMuffins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry becomes fascinated with Sumia after she suffers a terrible injury in battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’d say this takes place shortly after C their support.
> 
> The Norse God Tyr is said to have had only one arm. The day Tuesday is named for him.

 

It was possibly the most beautiful thing Henry had ever seen: blood pouring from what was left of her arm like one of those fountains in town squares, the ones with statues of ladies who poured water from a jug. Only, Sumia wasn’t statue. He stood transfixed as she screamed magnificently, dropping of the back of her mount, plunging toward the earth.

Ricken happened to be directly below; quickly setting up a web of magic, he was able to break her fall. “We need help over here!” he shouted.

Maribelle galloped over, hoping down off her horse. The troubadour was normally collected when healing injuries, but this time a flash a of horror crossed her delicate features as her staff began to glow.

“I can stop the bleeding, but I can’t grow her a new arm…” she said with regret.

One of the Risen burbled behind Henry as he was marveling over the scene taking place some thirty yards away.

“Ooh, sorry there, Mister, I don’t wanna play right now,” Henry informed without turning around. The creature crumpled into a heap of ash.

Henry approached the small band forming around their fallen comrade.

Sumia lay unconscious in the dirt. Her left arm was completely missing from the elbow down, though the bleeding had ceased thanks to Maribelle.

Ricken hovered nervously as Lissa and Frederick rushed over, clearly horrified.

“Hey, this sure is a funny a place to fall asleep!” Henry crouched down beside Sumia as if to inspect a colorful fallen leaf.

Frederick grimaced. “I searched the area, but I wasn’t able to find…,” he began mournfully, unwilling to finish the sentence.

“It must have been a curse, for it to just disappear like that,” said Lissa, turning grey from worry. “If we could have found it, Maribelle and I may have been able to put it back on…”

At that moment, Sumia’s loyal pegasus swooped down from the sky to land beside them. She began to nervously nudge at Sumia’s pale face, which elicited a groan from the unconscious knight.

“I’ll take her back to camp,” Henry volunteered suddenly. “I’ll just borrow this good ol’ horsey here.”

“You?” Maribelle asked with a nip of incredulity, tight grip causing her staff to shake with the effort of constant healing charms.

“Animals love me! Isn’t that right, Miss Horsey?”

Chrom could be heard shouting something in the distance. Things were still chaotic; there wasn't any time for argument.

 Henry sprung up onto the pegasus as if he were a trained knight himself, and quickly used a charm to levitate Sumia into position in front of him before taking off.

 “Would you take us to camp, please? You know, the place we spent the night?” He asked his mount once they were airborne.

He sensed the animal’s understanding response.

Once he was sure they headed in the right direction, he looked down at the girl nestled in his arms.

It was the first time that he had seen anyone from the Yllisean side be maimed like this before. The majority of them were such skilled fighters, and the ones that weren’t stuck like scale-mites on a dragon to those who were, that they usually only walked away with nothing worse than a few nicks and a want for a good bath. Now that it finally had happened, he wasn’t sure what he had expected. It had been something to witness, of course. The blood cascading through the air had been spectacular to behold and all, but now the life-less body of Sumia lay limp in his arms, pale face splattered in blood, as if she had devoured a juicy berry. She had certainly been more entertaining when she was awake- one never knew what piece of crockery she’d lay waste to next. She’d always smile whenever he’d help her carry the dishes or magically repair something that she had dropped. Henry liked it when people smiled. Sure, he also enjoyed the look of faces twisted in agony, but smiling wasn’t so bad either. It was an expression he was familiar with, at least.

They touched down in camp. One healer was always left back in case of emergency. This time it was Libra who came running out, immediately sensing something amiss.

The female healers had done a very good job, leaving little for the monk to do other than dress the wound, settle the patient into a cot and prepare a potion for the pain when she awoke.

“Gettin’ bored there? Sleeping people kinda don’t do much, huh? I mean, unless you curse their nightmares, then they do all kindsa neat stuff! You know, like fall out of the top bunk and crack their skulls, or-” Henry began, having noticed Libra checking hospital tent’s small clock after he had finished work on the potion.

“Actually, Henry, I’m afraid it’s time for my afternoon prayers. Would you mind terribly watching over her for a few moments?” Libra asked apologetically.

“Oh, swell. Sure thing!”

Once Libra had left, Henry settled down on the stool by the side of the cot.

It was very quiet with most of the company away fighting.

“So, Sumia…Read any good books lately?”

Henry had grown to be uncomfortable with silence. It was he true that he enjoyed time around animals, but to him, they never seemed silent. Every ripple of muscle or twitch of whiskers spoke volumes to him. When humans were quiet, bad things happened. His parents had been very quiet people.

“Your pegasus, she told me that the pie you dropped outside the other day was really yummy!”

Sumia groaned softly, face contorting into a cringe. Henry did tend to have that effect on people.

Out of curiosity, Henry pulled back the blanket a bit. The bandage was beginning to turn pinkish in blotches. Whatever the girls had done for her was beginning to undo. Henry would have cast the time-reverse hex, but that only worked when all the parts of whatever had broken were present.

The pink was quickly painting itsself to crimson now.

Henry found himself wondering what had become of whoever had done this. He assumed that someone from their side had made them go bye-bye already, but how? Had Chrom chopped them up into itty-bitty bits? Had Tharja laid a gruesome curse on the offender, causing their bones to twist until they leapt from their own airborne mount in order to escape the pain?

He wished he could have stayed there to watch, or better yet, take care of it himself. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had elected to take Sumia to safety instead. Frederick could’ve tossed her up onto his horse and gotten help for her nearly as quickly as Henry had, but something about that trying to picture that scene made something wriggle in his guts, the same sort of feeling he used to have when his wolf-mother would play with her own cubs instead of him.

“Henry!” the mage’s thoughts were interrupted by Libra returning from his prayers, clearly having his underthings in a twist over something or other. “Why didn’t you call me? The bleeding’s gotten terrible…”

After getting the bleeding under control once more, Libra tasked Henry with holding a cool cloth to Sumia’s forehead. For a man who never seemed to take anything seriously, he diligently stayed with her all through the night, even after the rest of the party had returned to the camp.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

Henry felt the shiver on the back of his neck well before Tharja joined his company in the bushes.

“If you needed help with learning how to follow someone around, you really should have come to me. She’ll notice you any second, at this rate,” She sneered.

“Aww! What gave me away?” Henry whined in mock disappointment, turning to face the other mage.

“Does that flock of ravens follow you so often that you don’t even notice them anymore?”

It was true, Henry had been so engrossed in watching Sumia across the field, that he hadn’t paid any mind to his bird friends that were beginning to gather in the trees all around.

It had been about a week since Sumia had been declared fit enough to be up and about once more. However, war was a busy affair and Henry had become wrapped up in other tasks after that first night he had spent by her side, things including tutoring Ricken in the dark arts (at the younger boy’s request, surprisingly enough).

Every now and then, however, Henry managed to catch a glimpse of Sumia around camp, more often than not assuring her fellow soldiers that she was managing alright. At the same time, Henry found that she would look up at the sky now more than ever, yet the more she craned upward, her expression itself fell just as far.

Today, Henry had been on his way to meet with Ricken, taking a shortcut through the brambles, when he stumbled upon Sumia out walking her pegasus in a secluded clearing. He hadn’t meant to hide from her, really, but it was as if a hex of silence had been cast upon him.

A grey ghost of weariness came over Sumia’s delicate features as she led the creature in wide circles around the sunny little patch.

Henry continued to watch as the pegasus knight halted her partner, pausing and taking a deep breath before attempting to scrabble up onto the tall creature’s back.

Though Sumia often had a regrettable lack of coordination when it came to matters of the dishware variety, riding her pegasus had always granted her a certain stability that often put Henry in mind of a pebble on the road, rolling this way and that when set downhill, yet solid and unmoving when finally reaching a place where it fit.

There were a number of things in life that Henry did not understand (and some of them, he wasn’t quite certain that he wished to), but a human’s bond with animals was not one of them. The winged creature had been like a third limb to the pegasus knight, and now Henry thought, as he watched her struggle with her single arm to climb the beast, only to slide back down to the dirt again and again, Sumia truly was in all ways left with a single appendage.

The sound of her sobbing had drown out Tharja’s approach.

“Ricken won’t admit it, but he’s getting impatient. If you make him wait any longer, he’s going to start asking me for help instead.” Tharja rolled her eyes.

Recently Henry had been gaining a reputation around camp for being exceedingly helpful (in between bouts of being exceedingly unsettling), but today he followed Tharja out of the brambles without another word, murder of ravens following suit. Sumia turned to look at the squawking cacophony, but the two mages had already vanished.

* * *

 

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask her if she _needed a hand_ ,” Ricken deadpanned, continuing to stir the potion Henry had instructed him on.

“No…” Henry considered, “But that’s a really good one! I’ll file it away for later!”

“Not that it’s any of my business… but Ricken, I think maybe you should stop spending so much time around Henry,” intoned Tharja, not looking up from her tome as she flipped the page. Though Henry was technically the one tutoring Ricken, Tharja often hung around her two fellow mages as they worked, operating under the premise that Robin was generally busy with Chrom at this time of day, leaving her with nothing better to do.

“Henry…” Ricken shook his head, laying his wooden spoon down beside the bubbling cauldron and turning to Henry, who was sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor watching him work. “You know how you told me that you would be very angry if I were killed?”

“Hmm… I guess I might have said something like that once…or was that you, Tharja?”

The other Plegian simply ignored him, turning another page.

Ricken continued, “Well, how did you feel when Sumia was hurt?”

“If you don’t keep stirring that potion, it’ll go boom.”

“…That’s what I thought,” said Ricken with a sigh of exasperation. “Henry, I know that you understand how hard things must be for Sumia right now. Even with your magic, I’m sure there are times where you’d still be frustrated if you couldn’t use one of your hands. Why don’t you just go talk to her and try to take her mind off of things? Maybe you could help her out with something.”

And so, Henry found himself out in the brambles once again, watching over Sumia.

Though he had comforted others over things now and again, somehow, this felt different.

She sat in a small patch of clovers, holding a small flower in her hand, twirling it between her fingers for a time, before bringing it to her lips.

“Those are pretty tasty, aren’t they?” Henry, said, emerging out of the trees.

Sumia squeaked, nearly dropping the flower. “Henry! You scared me!”

“Really? That’s all it takes? I’ll remember that come Halloween…” Henry chuckled.

“I wasn’t trying to eat the flower, Henry,” Sumia sighed. “I’m trying to figure out a way to do my flower fortunes now that I…I can’t pull the petals off with my other hand.”

“Oh, that? You know, I could curse you so that each time you hold a flower, the petals would drop off one by one!” he suggested, confident in his solution.

“To be honest, Henry…I don’t think that I would like that very much, but thank you for trying,” she replied, forcing a smile that failed to reach her tired eyes.

“Hmm? Why not?” The Ylisseans could be quite the enigma at times.

“Because sometimes I might just want to pick a flower to put in a vase, or give to Cordelia when’s she’s feeling down. They don’t exist just for my silly fortunes… Maybe I should just give it up. It’s not real magic like you and Tharja and Miriel have…”

“Where do you usually start from?” Henry asked.

“Huh?”

“When you pluck the petals, where do you start from- the top one or the one that’s smallest…?”

“There’s actually not that much of a method to it, I’m afraid. I really just start anywhere…” Sumia said sadly.

After a pause, one lone white petal levitated away from the stem.

“You don’t have to tell me what you’re asking it, if you don’t want to,” Henry assured as another petal floated to the ground.

Once the last petal had fallen, Sumia was silent for a moment, eyes shut as she meditated on whatever it was she had needed advice on. “Thank you, Henry.” Her eyes seemed just a little less gray around the edges when she smiled this time.

“Glad I could help!” Henry turned to leave, before looking back again. “Oh yeah, come to this patch whenever you want to do your fortunes; I’ve hexed it so that the petals will fall off once you pick one of the flowers. This way, you can still pick flowers all willy-nilly anywhere else you want, and they’ll still wilt at their natural time.”

 

* * *

 

The next day, Henry ‘came by’ (that is to say, had his crow friends inform him of Sumia’s whereabouts) Sumia attempting to ride her pegasus once more, doing little better than the last time, though at least now her face was free of tears.

“Easy there, girl,” she soothed the creature.

“Hey-o!”

“Henry!” she giggled as the pegasus licked her cheek. “We seem to be running into each other a lot lately.”

Sumia was looking much healthier today, the sickly pallor having mostly thawed back into warm life.

“Hmm, is that so? What a crazy coincidence!” He placed his hand against the animal’s flank, stroking gently. The pegasus let out a pleased knicker. “I don’t know if you knew, but she told me her name is Firefly.”

“Really?” Sumia was surprised. “When did you she tell you that? Just now?”

The fact that Henry could communicate with plants and animals was more or less known around camp by now, though some of the more skeptical sorts would wink and nudge one another whenever Henry’s talent was brought up.

Sumia had accepted it without question, beyond asking Henry in a hushed and horrified tone if the flowers felt pain when she plucked them. _‘They don’t! It’s over before they know it, but I think they’d be happy knowing they were able to help someone,’_ had come the reply.

“Firefly…” Sumia tasted the word. “I had been calling her ‘Daisy’…”

“She always thought of it as your nickname for her,” Henry assured. “By the way, you looked like you were having a teensy bit of a hard time there. Mind if I help?”

Sumia nodded her agreement, and Henry began the spell for levitating Sumia up into the saddle.

The process took a little more effort than floating flower petals but soon Henry had Sumia flying in the air, considerably higher than the saddle. Sumia giggled, plucking a leaf from a tree top. She really did seem happiest when up in the air.

“Whoopsie! Looks like I missed!” Henry joked, before finally letting her down into the saddle.

Sumia’s smile began to wither into a frown once more.

“What’s wrong?” Henry asked. Everything had been going so well.

“I just worry that I won’t be able to grip the rein tightly enough with only one hand…”

“Oh, that? Let me take it, and I’ll have Tharja make it alllll sticky, so you can’t get it off your hand until you land again,” Henry offered.

“You mean you can’t do it?” Sumia was genuinely surprised, though the question had a tint of sarcasm around the edges.

“Neh. I mean, I _could_ , but Tharja is better at that kind of stuff. Entrapment, you know?”

“And here I thought you could do anything,” Sumia teased, her mood lightening once again as she slid off her mount.

Henry’s eyes fell upon the knight’s maimed arm as she jumped to the ground.

“Does it still feel kinda ouchy?” Though his choice of phrasing was childish as usual, it held a note of true concern.

Sumia began to unconsciously massage the part of her left arm that was wrapped inside the sling. “It’s actually been much better these past few days,” Sumia smile turned bitter, “Though I still can’t help but feel that I’m going to be more useless than ever this way… Not that you haven’t been a huge help, Henry! Really, you have,” she added quickly.

"You're not useless at all, Sumia! You make everyone super duper happy just by being around!"

Though Henry still wasn’t quite certain why, in that moment he knew that he wanted to help Sumia smile as often as possible.

* * *

 

After that day, the two spent more and more time together, Henry cheering Sumia on as she rode her pegasus, and Sumia marveling over Henry’s creative spells and hexes. Recently, there came a thankful lull in the fighting, allowing everyone at camp some well-deserved time with their friends and lovers. Sumia became healthier every day, learning new ways to manage, as Henry grew more aware of his feelings (with some nudging from Ricken). Things were like a fairytale, until one particular evening when Sumia entered her tent. She and Henry had grown close enough now that the two would sometimes spend time together in there, reading quietly while enjoying the other’s company. Today was different.

“HENRY, STOP!” Sumia shrieked, wresting the bloodied javelin from the man’s hand. It was her’s, the one she had carelessly left out on top of her trunk after polishing andinspecting it for wear.

Henry had cut himself deeply, the blood running from the area just above his elbow like a spilled wine goblet.

Henry pouted in confusion. “I just wanted us to match. I thought it might be cute.”

“No. No, no, no. No!” She repeated, snatching the decorative quilt off the edge of her cot.

It was the one her mother had made for her, to keep her warm on cold nights during training camp. She wadded it up, pressing it to his wound. The whimsical daisy pattern quickly disappeared under a gush of red.

Henry had never seen Sumia angry like this. It was interesting, he thought, and not completely unenjoyable, though he wasn’t quite sure what the big deal was. It had only stung a little thanks to his poor nerve function, if that was her worry. Showing support for the person he was rapidly growing quite fond of seemed like a perfectly reasonable trade off for a little bit of pain.

“It’s always like this with you!” Sumia continued,“You’re hurting, the enemy’s hurting, your friends are hurting… that’s the only time you’re interested in anything! The rest of the time, you’re like this, this empty mannequin or something! I thought I had been wrong before I got to know you, but…everything you say and do, it really is just make-believe to you…”

Her face was red with frustration, before she buried it into his chest, working arm letting go of the quilt for a moment, making an attempt to embrace him as best she could.

“Sumia…I…I’m sorry.” It definitely wasn’t make-believe this time. He truly did feel…something. Hopefully, it was appropriate emotion to feel when one apologized.

He felt something damp on his face then. Was he bleeding from his eyeballs now too? That sounded like an awful lot of fun. Henry touched a hand to his cheek; it came away damp, but not with blood.

I had been an awful long time since he last cried…or had he ever done it at all until now? Parts of his childhood were still fuzzy at times.

“I forgive you, Henry. I’m sorry for shouting; just please don't do anything like that again,” Sumia’s words were muffled by Henry’s tunic.

Hesitating for a moment, he put his arms around Sumia in turn.

“Hey, what _did_ you ask the flower about that time?”

 

_The end_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's up to you what she asked the flower, and what it's answer was, because I'm horrible. :)


End file.
